Classes!

It’s been a little (long) while since I’ve made an update! I’m going to make an effort to remember that this exists a little more often. Things haven’t been helped by the fact I’m getting over a fairly nasty respiratory infection. Thankfully, I’m over the hill on that- amoxocillian and rest usually do wonders.

I recently crested another hill, by the way- I’m around halfway done with my time here in Kenya, as insane as that sounds. I’m not exactly sure of the proportion, as I consider it fairly lame to count days, but I’ve been here around 3 months, which is wild to think about.

Things are going extremely well here, aside from the aforementioned illness. I’m actually wrapping up my coursework for the semester (more on that later) and preparing for winter break- Kilimanjaro and a visit from my parents. I’ll be done with regular classes in a little less than a month.

I thought it might be nice if actually got around to describing my courses and instructors. In no particular order:

Geographies of Development: This is fairly interesting one. It actually doesn’t have a set instructor- it is instead made up of a series of lectures followed by a series of trips. Thus, we’ve had various experts come in and talk about education, health, politics, NGOs, et cetera. The lectures were a good introduction to Kenya, and let us slightly understand what was going on around us. After the lectures wrapped up, we went to Kisumu (see last post?) and wrote a paper on the challenges of rural development. Next week we’ll travel to Masaai Mara and produce a paper on the impact of tourism on development.

Kiswahili: This class is excellent/darasa ni bora! Although I won’t be writing a novel in kiwswahili anytime soon, I’ve made decent progress at picking up the language- I can use it at least partially in most daily interactions. It doesn’t hurt that most Kenyans speak a bastardized hybrid of Swahili and English, so it’s perfectly acceptable for me to just switch between the two if I get stuck. The instructor is a real champ too- he got his start teaching peace corp volunteers, so he knows how to handle us hapless wazungu.

Politics and Government of Kenya: In terms of learning, this is likely my best class, mostly on account of the professor. Dr. Wanyande isn’t just the chair of the political science department, he’s also one of the leading political intellectuals in Kenya. He played a role in writing the new constitution, co-chaired the body that organized the campaign to pass it, and might be on the committee tasked with monitoring its implementation. His class is always fascinating, despite the fact that it is usually comprised entirely of lecture on the arcane details of structural adjustment, ethnic politics, and party-state relations. His personality is also quite interesting- he has a fairly crazy beard, but he’s probably the most even keeled/dry Kenyan I’ve met in my time here(for any K readers out there- he makes Dugas look personable). It took us a few weeks to get a smile out of him, but we’ve recently made some progress- last class he told us about his misadventures with waterskiing while getting his doctorate in Florida, and the difficulty of getting goat in the US.

African Oral Literature: This class is great. The professor is one of the stranger people I’ve met in Kenya- he tells us the same stories all the time, will randomly cut off class to get lunch, and is immensely physically awkward (he’s fairly lanky, and holds himself in the strangest way). He’s still a total winner though. The books are great too- although it’s technically an oral lit class, it’s based around reading African novels and plays and relating the form/concerns to oral lit. Most of all, it’s nice to be in a literature class again- I hadn’t taken one since highschool, and I was missing it.

That’s the sum of it! Anyhow, expect another update early next week, after I return from our thanksgiving/safari to the Masaai Mara. I’ll try and snap a picture of a lion eating a crocodile eating a hippo or something!